IBM Commits to AIX and Linux

Ross Mauri, general manager of IBM’s pSeries System, says in this interview: “We want Linux to have a great home on the Power architecture. We will continue to contribute to the open-source development of Linux, as well as all of the packages that surround Linux, to ensure it performs well on Power. But as we have said, AIX is our flagship on System p.”

“Do you ever consider open-sourcing AIX the way Sun is open-sourcing Solaris?

“Mauri: No, we’re not. I think that OpenSolaris is a little bit of a game Sun is playing to try to get good PR. But I don’t think it’s in the spirit of true open source.”

I don’t see how OpenSolaris is not in the true spirit of open source. They have been activiley encouraging other groups to utilize the technology in Open Solaris. DTrace in FreeBSD and ZFS in DragonflyBSD come to mind. Everytime a groups makes strides with utilizing code from Open Solaris it’s always posted right on the news page.

The sharing of code and working with developers on other projects IS the spirit of open source.

Did anyone else see the mailing lists posts when rumors where about that Apple was interesting in ZFS. The engineers were really excited about it!

I have to agree with this one. There is a lot of back and forth about Solaris and their licensing choices, but I do very much believe that Open Solaris is in the spirit of open source. The code is quite readily usable, and the project seems to be motivated by an excitement among the engineers of sharing their work with the larger community.

The CDDL was made expressly so that GPL software could not benefit from it. This includes Solaris’s numero uno enemy that I don’t even have to mention. Hint: it isn’t anything from Microsoft.

So what? Open source and GPL are not synonyms. You could make the same argument about the GPL being “explicitly constructed to deny benefit to BSD”. There is no reason to believe that the GPL is the one true way.

I think this interview reveals what IBM’s true intentions with Linux were/are. They desperately needed a new strategy in the Unix marketplace after being decimated by Sun during the dot com years. Seeing that AIX was not doing the job, they came up with a clever strategy and put their marketing dollars behind Linux. But it was less about Linux and more about beating Sun. If they could lure those Sun customers to Linux on Intel, that would be the first step to later moving them up to AIX on Power. Then the dot com era crash and burns leaving the entire market upside down. Seeing that Sun is now vulnerable, they kick up the anti-Sun PR and FUD machine into full gear. However, this strategy has sort of backfired on them because it was impossible to keep the focus of their efforts on damaging Sun market share only and there would inevitably be unforeseen consequences. I read an interesting report that stated that both HP and Dell profited more from IBM’s Linux marketing than IBM. That’s because Linux is most popular on x86 and although IBM has an x86 product line, it has nowhere near the market share that HP and Dell enjoy in that space. But still management types respect IBM and if IBM says Linux is ready, then it must be, so they call up their HP, Dell, etc. rep and order their servers to run Linux. So now this has put IBM in an awkward position because their real goal the whole time was not to grow the Linux market, but to damage Sun’s market and increase the AIX and Power market. So here we are today, Sun’s market share is increasing and has recaptured the Unix leader spot with 56% of Unix market share while IBM’s AIX share is declining and Linux continues to increase. The next couple of years should be pretty interesting..

Exactly, I have always seen IBM’s position with Linux as a way to provide a “low cost” option and appear to be F/OSS friendly for those who care about that and get “in the door”. One of the problems with IBM selling and supporting Linux is that most people want it running on “cheap” x86 hardware, not pSeries machines that cost far more (the same argument I have with HP about selling Intergrity servers (SuperDome) to run Linux). I have always maintained that once IBM got in your organization with Linux, if it doesn’t run as well they would be willing to convert you to AIX, one of their cash cows. They are trying really hard to break into where I work now, I can’t give specifics but they have mentioned a certain web product and AIX in the same sentence. This was to a group of Windows admins which I thought was hilarious.

It will be interesting to see how IBM balances Linux and AIX and manage not to destroy the mindshare they have created around them and Linux.

They are realizing that people still see value in proprietary UNIX. So when they realized customers where going to choose Linux or HP/UX-Solaris but not the atrophying AIX, they also realized that they needed to keep developing AIX. Not because it is fundamentally superior to Linux, but because of the ecosystems that surround proprietary UNIX and their customers relative ease with AIX.

So IBM realigned and decided that they really liked AIX all along! (Nothing to see hear, move along)